Videos – Bigleaf Networks

Introducing the new Bigleaf Cloud Connect

Amy Chan — Tue, 20 Aug 2024 19:36:54 +0000

Watch this video to see how Bigleaf Cloud Connect enhances how you can achieve optimal cloud connectivity and network performance. This powerful new dashboard provides unparalleled visibility and control, simplifying network management across multiple locations.

With the new Bigleaf Cloud Connect, you can:

Easily manage multiple companies, sites, devices, and circuits from a single intuitive dashboard
Gain deeper insight into network health with comprehensive global and multi-site views
Access real-time metrics, performance data, and detailed site information for immediate, actionable insights
Leverage enhanced analytics to make informed long-term decisions and quickly troubleshoot issues

Streamlined user support, self-help resources, and improved performance make navigating the new Bigleaf Cloud Connect dashboard effortless.

This is just the beginning of a new era in cloud network management.

Welcome to Bigleaf Cloud Connect.

Optimize your network with Bigleaf Cloud Connect: Real-time visibility and control

Amy Chan — Tue, 20 Aug 2024 14:20:01 +0000

Watch this video walk-through to explore how Bigleaf Cloud Connect delivers real-time visibility, insight, and control of your network

Discover Bigleaf Cloud Connect, your essential tool for optimizing network performance and cloud connectivity. This intuitive dashboard offers real-time visibility, actionable insights, and control over your cloud network, empowering you to efficiently troubleshoot and resolve issues.

In this video, we walk you through how Cloud Connect can enhance the connectivity and performance of your entire network, whether you’re managing a single site or multiple locations.

Video highlights:

00:00 Introduction to Bigleaf Cloud Connect
00:09 Dashboard capabilities overview
00:44 How businesses leverage Bigleaf Cloud Connect
01:43 Troubleshooting example: Slow applications and dropped Teams calls
01:53 Steps to diagnose and resolve network issues
01:59 Account overview on the Sites page
02:14 Exploring alerts, data usage, and performance graphs
04:32 Understanding performance metrics
05:39 Diagnostic tools: Ping, MTR, tcpdump
06:00 Transitioning to proactive network management
06:39 Utilizing filters and sorting for issue prioritization and insights
08:05 Modifying circuit traffic handling
09:08 Recap of key benefits

Experience the full potential of Bigleaf Cloud Connect for your business. Request a personalized demo to explore how our dashboard’s real-time visibility, actionable insights, and enhanced control can optimize your network and cloud performance.

What does a leaf have to do with networking?

Amy Chan — Thu, 26 Oct 2023 21:28:39 +0000

Nature is the best engineer. We can see that with how leaves feature a naturally redundant system. See how we apply that same concept to our network to deliver reliable internet connectivity without complexity and came up with our name, Bigleaf Networks!

Keep your business operating smoothly with Bigleaf

Amy Chan — Wed, 20 Sep 2023 23:15:13 +0000

Keep your internet applications, such as Zoom, RingCentral, and POS systems running without disruption or delay. Bigleaf SD-WAN ensures your cloud network runs optimally on the public internet, eliminating outages and downtime.

Learn how Bigleaf will keep your business operating smoothly.

Schedule a demo

Bigleaf improves Microsoft Teams performance

Amy Chan — Wed, 20 Sep 2023 23:00:09 +0000

We tested to see how Microsoft Teams performs with and without Bigleaf. Learn what we discovered in this video.

For a more in-depth review of our test, check out our blog, How Microsoft Teams performs with and without Bigleaf’s SD-WAN.

Telehealth patient experience depends on a healthy internet connection

Amy Chan — Thu, 25 May 2023 19:52:55 +0000

Virtual medicine, including telehealth, started to take hold in healthcare organizations long before 2020, but its use was limited by state regulations, insurance rules, and preference to specific medical specialties and situations.

Technology was also a limiting factor until recently. Telehealth services surged during the COVID-19 pandemic, to support social distancing for the duration of the public health emergency. Post-COVID, telehealth remains popular, as patients, practitioners, and healthcare organizations appreciate the convenience and cost-effectiveness of remote care. In 2022, the U.S. market for telehealth services grew to more than $35 billion and it is expected to continue expanding rapidly.*

While this model of remote patient care offers many benefits, it also creates new technology challenges for the IT pros who deal with choppy and dropped calls that degrade the patient-provider experience.

Telehealth services are particularly challenging for IT pros because the real-time interactions between providers and patients depend on a secure, flawless internet connection. The connecting circuits are not controlled by the HCO’s IT group directly, but IT is nevertheless responsible for maintaining a stable connection with 100% uptime to support telehealth effectively.

Telehealth – and connectivity – fill many essential roles in the modern healthcare organization:

Remote consultations

Homebound patients rely on telehealth visits and many others prefer the convenience of these remote consultations with healthcare providers. However, any disruption, such as frozen or jittery images or poor sound quality, can interfere with important discussions about symptoms, diagnoses, and proposed treatments.

Access to medical specialists

Specialized medical expertise can be unavailable locally, especially in rural or underserved regions. Telehealth can bridge this gap by connecting patients with distant medical specialists. Reliable internet connectivity ensures smooth communication so patients and doctors can share medical records, diagnostic images, and other essential information.

Health information exchange

Patients benefit from coordination among the healthcare professionals on their care team. Video conferencing tools make collaboration more effective, as providers can share observations, test results, and treatment choices interactively across different healthcare organizations and geographic locations. A smooth, seamless internet connection supports these vital interactions and preserves the practitioners’ valuable time.

Online communities

Virtual support groups and other online communities give healthcare providers more ways to connect with their patients and offer guidance and motivation. These interactions may be conducted through interactive or asynchronous chat as well as video conferencing.

In summary, internet connectivity is a critical component that makes telehealth possible. Telehealth – and network health – support effective and efficient delivery of services to patients regardless of their location or personal mobility.

Bigleaf Networks provides end-to-end optimization to maintain flawless operation of telehealth and all internet- and cloud-enabled medical technologies.

Schedule a demo to learn how Bigleaf helps healthcare organizations to succeed in the cloud.

* Global Market Insights, “U.S. Telemedicine Market.”

Ensuring Superior VoIP and UCaaS Session Quality for Kinect Communications with Bigleaf

Amy Chan — Thu, 11 May 2023 15:49:02 +0000

As the world grappled with the unprecedented challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses faced a new reality where digital connectivity became the lifeline of operations. Internet bandwidth, once abundant, turned into a critical resource, especially for services that require real-time communication like Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS). In our comprehensive video feature, we highlight Charlie Slaughter, the CEO of Kinect Communications, and his strategic partnership with Bigleaf Networks—a collaboration that proved to be a turning point amidst these challenges. He turned lemons into lemonade by improving VoIP and UCaaS session quality with Bigleaf.

Charlie Slaughter encountered a pivotal moment during the height of remote work demands. He recalls the intense struggle for bandwidth, “I couldn’t even make a phone call,” a sentiment that captures the frustration many faced. But with Bigleaf’s SD-WAN solutions, not only did he conquer these obstacles at home, but he also saw Kinect’s services transform, marking a remarkable 42% growth in revenue. This growth was fueled by the enhancement of VoIP and UCaaS session quality, showcasing how resilient networking solutions can drive business success.

Watch our in-depth video to witness Charlie’s firsthand account of how Bigleaf’s innovative technology elevated Kinect Communications’ service quality, ensuring their clients experienced uninterrupted and clear communications.

By integrating Bigleaf Networks into their infrastructure, Kinect Communications could offer their clientele high-quality VoIP and UCaaS sessions, pivotal for maintaining connectivity in a time when physical distancing measures were at their peak. “Whether they know it or not, they need it,” Charlie stated, emphasizing the often-understated necessity of robust network solutions.

Further into the video, we delve into how Bigleaf not only met but exceeded expectations during an era where every byte of bandwidth counted. The implementation of Bigleaf’s services at Kinect Communications became a game-changer, turning potential operational chaos into an opportunity for growth and stability, especially by improving VoIP and UCaaS session quality.

Learn more about the Bigleaf difference and read Charlie’s success story. Discover the innovation that drove Kinect Communications to not just survive but thrive during the bandwidth battles that came with mass remote work scenarios.

Charlie’s experience is a testament to the critical nature of dependable internet solutions. Bigleaf’s commitment to quality and customer service makes it a trusted partner for businesses navigating the complexities of cloud-based communication technologies. It’s a story of triumph over adversity, of leveraging the right technology at the right time to ensure business continuity and growth.

In the realm of VoIP and UCaaS, session quality and integrity is paramount. Bigleaf’s Dynamic QoS and intelligent load balancing are just two of the many features that have enabled Kinect Communications to deliver outstanding service to their customers. Charlie’s words resonate with the countless others who have come to rely on Bigleaf for maintaining superior service quality: “Quality of service is a direct reflection on me, whether it’s my problem or not. So it’s extremely important to me.”

For those looking to strengthen their organization’s networking foundation and ensure the highest quality of service in VoIP and UCaaS sessions, Bigleaf’s solutions provide peace of mind and tangible results. The video and accompanying success story are not just promotions but serve as essential case studies for the benefits of robust SD-WAN solutions in a demanding digital landscape.

To understand how Bigleaf can support your business in overcoming connectivity challenges and enhancing your service offerings, we invite you to schedule a free demo today. Join the community of businesses like Kinect Communications that have taken their operations to new heights with Bigleaf Networks.

[Webinar] Building a solid cloud foundation with a Cloud Access Network

Bigleaf Networks — Thu, 09 Jun 2022 03:38:00 +0000

As business applications move from data centers to the cloud, enabling necessary performance is a struggle for many IT teams. Cloud applications are delivered over the public internet which can be erratic and prone to outages — and there’s no way to put a firewall or SD-WAN box at the other end of the connection to provide QoS and failover for inbound traffic. You’ll learn: Why and how to move from a site-to-site to site-to-cloud mindset What a Cloud Access Network is and does How a Cloud Access Network is different from other types of networks

[Webinar] Beyond uptime: Evaluating and assessing your internet maturity

Bigleaf Networks — Thu, 09 Jun 2022 03:36:00 +0000

Many IT leaders struggle to determine the connectivity infrastructure needed to ensure the greatest amount of usable uptime, downtime-free failover, and the ideal user experience for their staff. Using a real healthcare business as an example, we’ll explain the Internet Maturity Model framework and uncover best practices to enable optimal network resiliency and usable uptime in your organization. During this webinar you’ll learn: The difficulties businesses face when depending on the public internet to act as their primary network Why complete outages are not the only disruptions to internet-reliant businesses How to optimize for cloud applications using Bigleaf

[Video] Starlink comparison against fiber, cable, LTE, and GEO Sat, plus static IP via SD-WAN

Bigleaf Networks — Thu, 19 May 2022 22:31:43 +0000

Recently Bigleaf founder Joel Mulkey got hold of the latest high-speed, low-latency, low-earth orbit (LEO) technology, Starlink. He conducted a hands-on comparison of how the technology performs against fiber, cable, LTE, GEO Sat & static IP via SD-WAN. See how they did.

Today I’m going to talk about low-earth orbit (LEO) satellite, like Starlink, and how you can use that for business connectivity needs. I’m here at my home office and notably, I don’t have any landline connectivity. I have a fixed wireless circuit from a local regional wireless ISP or WISP, a cellular option, LTE connection, as well as a geosynchronous satellite option. And so, we’ll add to those a LEO Sat through Starlink and take a look at what it does.

Setting Up Starlink

To install Starlink, you first use their app to scan the sky to see if the location that you’re planning has a clear view of where their satellites will be flying by.

*Welcome to my networking rack here in the house. In here, I’ve got a switch and my Bigleaf router, my SD-WAN router, and there’s three WAN circuits connected. We’re going to hook up the fourth today!*

We can see here, I’m logged into the Bigleaf Web Dashboard. I pulled up my house. And on the overview page, I can see I have three WAN circuits configured so far. What I’ll do is I’ll go into our configuration tab here, go into edit mode, and I’ll add a new WAN circuit. You can specify geostationary or low earth orbit for your satellite type and the platform will adapt accordingly. And just a moment ago, the tunnels came up.

Comparing The Data

We now have some graph data.

I want to address a few questions I think might be running through folks’ minds. First, how do I think about Starlink versus most landline type circuits, fiber cable, DSL, that kind of thing?

I think the health alarm data we can see is really useful to know how these comparisons sit. If I was to go pull up another customer site, which I’ll do here.

So this location, we have some Comcast fiber. This is in Oregon. This is a typical fiber health graph. Literally nothing. This circuit above here, this is a cable circuit, looks pretty clean as well. Users are not going to notice too much of what’s going on here. You’ve got a little bit of jitter upload and download at times. I would say this is pretty squeaky clean for a cable circuit. You can see them totally clean sometimes, but this is a nice cable circuit. We see them with plenty of packet loss and other issues at times. We’ll take a look at another location here. This top circuit here is again, Comcast fiber. So we can see, it looks pretty clean. There’s a couple blips. So, this one could be user impacting. This is middle of the day. You have basically a mini outage.

Then Frontier Fios. We’ll take a look at that one. Again, looks pretty clean, a couple blips there, not too big of a deal.

So back to my house: If you compare those graphs against the Starlink graph for the same time period, it’s got periods in the middle of the night where it looks pretty clean, but during the day, there’s definitely a lot of variability. And that’s what I would probably highlight.

With most wireless type connections, they’re going to be more variable than a landline circuit. Yet, they are also a great redundancy path. Throughput wise, that can vary as well. So, fiber’s typically going to offer you more throughput than what we’re seeing with Starlink, which is around somewhere between 60 and 120mg down and upload is very variable up from zero to 15 megabit up at my location here.

Let’s take a look at other health paths like ViaSat. ViaSat is a geosynchronous satellite, and we can see that quality wise, it’s actually very good! Now this graph doesn’t reflect the absolute latency of the path to traverse to geosynchronous orbit and back. The latency that our platform measures is in the form of relative one-way latency. So, our technology does some things to adapt for that, knowing that geosynchronous satellite does have that higher latency, just kind of in the background.

You might wonder, well, what’s difference between geosynchronous satellite and low earth orbit satellite? I drew a cute little diagram here to show that. (4:22)

So, if you’ve got my house, the red depicts essentially what is happening with the lower earth orbit, where there’s a shorter path from my house to the satellite, to the ground station, which then is connected via fiber to whatever data I’m reaching, some data center, whereas the geosynchronous satellite is a much larger distance. So, the reason the latency is much lower is because it’s taking a much shorter path, just geographically.

The time of flight of the RF signals is reduced.

Compare Against LTE Circuit

Now, if we compare against the LTE circuit I have, the LTE circuit is much more consistent in its behavior and much lower in packet loss, but the throughputs a lot less. And when I’ve tested here, I’m getting about 4mhgs each way on that circuit max.

And then lastly, the fixed wireless circuit I have from a local residential fixed wireless provider. We can see that during times of load, there is significant jitter and packet loss. I’d say it sits in between the LTE and the Starlink as far as variability.

So, all in all, each wireless circuit does have its pros and cons. And you need to look at what’s available in your area and trade-offs of throughput and performance characteristics.

Static IP Address

Now, what about a static IP address? That’s something that a lot of businesses need to be able to deploy with certain use cases, VPNs, or hosting a server, that kind of thing. And none of the circuits that I have, have a standard static IP address.

They’re all using a DHCP provided NAT IP address. And the nice thing is with Bigleaf Networks, I actually have a static IP block. Bigleaf creates a tunnel across each of these circuits and delivers a single public static IP address over them. Just like you would get if you had BGP in a carrier-grade enterprise environment.

The nice thing is with Bigleaf Networks, I actually have a static IP block. Bigleaf creates a tunnel across each of these circuits and delivers a single public static IP address over them.
Joel Mulkey

So… What About SD-WAN?

Lastly, do you need SD-WAN to make use of lower earth orbit like Starlink?

Well, looking at the health of the circuits at my home here, I would say YES. If I had just this one circuit, or even if I had multiple circuits with a less sophisticated load balancing QS mechanism, I wouldn’t be able to do things like voice calling or Zoom — those sorts of sensitive applications — in a reliable manner.

And we could see examples of that here. I had some Zoom calls this morning, all this green saying VoIP was the Zoom traffic. And we could see that the SD-WAN platform really had to adapt hard to make best use of that. So, here’s my LTE circuit that used that for upload traffic.

This was around 10:30 to 10:50 AM and we could see that the alarms were fairly low at that time — level two jitter was all that it was seeing. The down link looks like, in part, on the fixed wireless circuit around 10:40 to 10:50 timeframe. (6:50)

It’s kind of jumpy because it was I think moving the traffic around and it’s likely because alarms varied. So, there’s some traffic that ended up on the fixed wireless, and then other traffic ended up here on the Starlink circuit at that time. So the platform was adapting to make sure that each packet was writing over the best possible circuit.

If I didn’t have that in place, my Zoom quality would not have been as good. Now, would it have been unusable? In this case, no. Starlink alarms aren’t terrible at that time.

If they were level four or five, yeah. At that point, that’s when people are unclicking their video. They’re going to just audio or saying, “Hey, can I call you on the phone?”

More On Starlink x SD-WAN

Another SD-WAN feature of note that Starlink really will need to be successful in the business environment is something that can provide QoS over very variable bandwidth circuits.

Via Iperf testing through the platform, we can see this is download testing. This is just raw Iperf traffic varying between 50 megabits a second up to 100. (8:44)

In the upload direction, we see traffic varies even more considerably, 9mgs down to 1mg.

Important: If you just have a static QoS policy applied to the circuit saying it’s 10mgs or something, that QoS isn’t going to work. The traffic’s going to hit constrictions within the Starlink service, get buffered and either dropped or delayed. So, you need a platform like Bigleaf that can detect that variability and bandwidth, adapt to that, and ensure QoS prioritization through that path, even as conditions change!

Conclusion

In conclusion, I think Starlink and low earth orbit are fantastic technologies. I’m really excited about what they bring to bear for folks in rural areas like me and businesses that can’t get good landline connectivity or need a really solid redundant path that offers more throughput than LTE can!

For business-critical use cases, I would combine it though with SD-WAN and another circuit, if you have, and we’d be more than happy to help you out with that at Bigleaf Networks.

Thanks for that walkthrough, Joel. We really appreciate it!

You can learn more about making the Starlink Satellite part of the connectivity plans at your business & see how Bigleaf can improve your connectivity for all your connection types by requesting a FREE demo. If you have any questions, send us an email at sales@bigleaf.net.

Starlink and SD-WAN deep dive: Install, troubleshooting, landline and wireless comparison

Bigleaf Networks — Sun, 15 May 2022 03:31:00 +0000

Get a deep-dive on the Starlink LEO Satellite service as our Founder and CEO installs it at his house (both via WiFi bridge and hard-wired), gets a static IP address via Starlink, troubleshoots performance issues, and compares it against Fiber, Cable, Fixed-wireless, 4G LTE, and GEO satellite circuits. Want a shorter version of this video without the integration and troubleshooting details? Check out the 10-min version here: https://youtu.be/ZdT52RCkZo8 CHAPTERS 0:00 – Intro 1:56 – Starlink Unboxing 3:17 – Initial Install Location 4:15 – iOS App Stats and Speed Tests 5:12 – Physical Network Integration 5:41 – WiFi Bridge Integration Diagram 6:48 – Configuring Starlink in Bigleaf SD-WAN 9:44 – Troubleshooting Packet Loss 12:43 – Moving from WiFi to Wired Ethernet 14:10 – Moving the dish to the roof 15:14 – Comparing Starlink vs. Fiber and Cable 18:18 – Comparing Starlink vs. GEO Sat (ViaSat) 20:10 – Comparing Starlink vs. LTE 20:32 – Comparing Starlink vs. Fixed Wireless 21:04 – How to get a Static IP address on Starlink 21:50 – Does Starlink need SD-WAN for business use? 24:20 – Varying throughput on Starlink with iPerf tests 25:19 – Conclusion

Channel Partners interview with Jeff Burchett, Bigleaf Networks

Bigleaf Networks — Tue, 07 Dec 2021 04:12:00 +0000

Jeff Burchett, CRO at Bigleaf Networks, sits down with Allison Francis of Channel Partners in Las Vegas for a 1:1 interview. Jeff discusses how Bigleaf supports MSPs, living in a time of new digital transformation, and more!

Internet Maturity Model 101

Bigleaf Networks — Sat, 30 Oct 2021 03:10:00 +0000

Bigleaf’s unique SD-WAN offering provides your customers with an internet HOV lane for key cloud applications. Watch this 30-minute webinar to learn what separates Bigleaf from other SD-WAN players. We talk about our propriety AI for QoS, same-IP failover, and reliable, owned backbone network.

Randi Robison and her experience with Bigleaf: No more compromises

Bigleaf Networks — Fri, 15 Oct 2021 03:08:00 +0000

When Randi Robison, Director of Partner Development – UT, ID for Telarus, started working from home full time, she struggled to work effectively because her internet connection didn’t provide the performance she needed. Her video calls dropped or were so choppy that she had to make decisions like turning off her video or calling in with her cell phone, just so she could participate in those calls. Then she brought in Bigleaf and all that changed. Hear her story.

How Bigleaf’s SD-WAN advances today’s SMB networks: IT Nation webinar

Bigleaf Networks — Sat, 31 Oct 2020 03:01:00 +0000

Join Joel Mulkey and Andrew Bagnato, Bigleaf’s founder/CEO and senior director of our MSP partner program, for a discussion of Bigleaf’s SD-WAN solution and how it works for MSPs. To learn more, visit https://www.bigleaf.net/msp-partners/

Creating a resilient network: Q&A with Lionakis IT Director Matthew Onken

Bigleaf Networks — Sat, 17 Oct 2020 02:59:00 +0000

In today’s environment, having a dependable, resilient network with redundancies and prioritization is a “no-brainer”. We sat down for a fireside chat with Matthew Onken, IT Director for Lionakis, a century-old architecture and engineering firm in Sacramento, CA. Onken researched and implemented a network continuity solution and justified the investment to the Lionakis management team. Onken offers insider tips and insights into the hidden benefits of dashboards and network visibility.

Enabling network performance in the home office

Bigleaf Networks — Sat, 17 Oct 2020 02:57:00 +0000

Employees working from home (WFH) present unique challenges for businesses today, with multiple users and apps vying for network bandwidth and priority. Home internet issues can hurt employee efficiency due to slow SaaS reponsiveness, frozen video conferences, or choppy audio. Issues like these are often difficult for IT to troubleshoot and fix remotely. Watch this webinar to learn how our easy-to-deploy home office solution solves common issues for employees working from home.

Fix bad video and VoIP calls for good

Bigleaf Networks — Sat, 17 Oct 2020 02:55:00 +0000

Today, employees increasingly rely on VoIP calls and video meetings to get work done. It’s common to experience poor connections, dropped calls, or internet outages where these tools don’t work at all. This results in lost business, employee frustration, and hurts your brand image. Fortunately, new technology provides a simple, cost-effective way to solve these issues so employees can stay connected and worry free.

Fixing choppy video and voice calls

Bigleaf Networks — Sat, 17 Oct 2020 02:49:00 +0000

We’ve been fielding lots of questions from Bigleaf partners and customers looking to get applications like Zoom and MS Teams to work reliably over residential internet. So we asked Bigleaf’s Founder, Joel Mulkey, to join us for a 30-minute chat/Q&A to discuss the most common issues and answer your questions.

Topics include:

Common causes of choppy audio/video
Diagnosing internet vs WiFi issues
Identifying and prioritizing call traffic
Available tools and technologies for home office networking

Prioritizing business applications in the home network

Bigleaf Networks — Sat, 17 Oct 2020 02:47:00 +0000

We’ve been fielding lots of questions from Bigleaf partners and customers looking to get applications like Zoom and MS Teams to work reliably over a home network. So we asked Bigleaf’s Founder & CEO, Joel Mulkey, to join us for a 30-minute chat/Q&A to discuss the most common issues and answer your questions.

Topics include:

How internet in the home differs from internet in the office
The impact of residential internet on business applications
How to diagnose issues with apps like Zoom and Teams
Available solutions and tools

Sean Weisenberger on his experience with Bigleaf home office

Bigleaf Networks — Wed, 09 Sep 2020 02:45:00 +0000

Sean Weisenburger of JIL Communications talks about what it’s been like since he hooked up his Bigleaf Home Office device — and Eric Brooker is ready with the stats from his portal, too.

What happened with the CenturyLink / Level 3 internet outage?

Bigleaf Networks — Wed, 02 Sep 2020 00:09:00 +0000

You probably noticed or heard that CenturyLink / Level 3 had a big network outage this past Sunday (August 30, 2020). Here are some insights from our perspective running a network that peers with them and many others.

Bigleaf home office: Reliable communication and application performance from your home offices

Bigleaf Networks — Tue, 04 Aug 2020 00:15:00 +0000

Make sure your remote team members can reliably connect to their everyday business tools, as they work from home, without worrying about poor performance. Use Bigleaf Home Office to keep non-business web traffic, such as streaming video and gaming, and less reliable residential Internet connections from impacting your business communications and applications.

[Video] See Bigleaf Home Office prioritize business app traffic

Amy Chan — Tue, 07 Jul 2020 15:30:56 +0000

Quality of Service (QoS) prioritization is like what medical professionals have said about social distancing, “It’s working when the possible problems don’t seem to be problems.”

In Bigleaf’s world, that means that when your business applications—like Zoom—are running smoothly without problem or issue, even when you’re running a host of other streaming apps, like Netflix or YouTube, your QoS is doing its job.

But how do you really know for sure? Well, we thought we’d show you.

Play Video

In this quick video we recorded, you’ll see us simultaneously run a Zoom session, play a YouTube video, and stream live TV broadcast on DirecTV on our computer—to replicate the traffic a household can get while you’re working from home. Then, you’ll see us flood the rest of connection with traffic by running a speed test to show how Zoom keeps working great even when we’ve maxed out its throughput capacity.

What you will notice is that there are no issues with the Zoom call—that both the voice and video work smoothly even while the internet connection they were running through was being hammered with non-business related traffic.

In addition to the video, you can see in the associated Bigleaf traffic optimization dashboard, how the number of high priority packets protected increased during the streaming of the apps and the speed test—representing how Bigleaf Home Office prioritizes your business traffic and your key applications will work with the reliability and quality that you need them to have.

High-priority packets protected before flooding the circuit with traffic.

High-priority packets protected after flooding the circuit with traffic.

Bigleaf Home Office: QoS prioritization in action

Bigleaf Networks — Fri, 29 May 2020 00:19:00 +0000

See how Bigleaf Home Office prioritizes your key business application traffic over common types of household Internet traffic, such as streaming video, so you can stay focused and productive as you work from home.

Putting SD WAN to Work for Your SMB Customers

Jon Hayes — Fri, 26 Jul 2019 00:26:00 +0000

SD-WAN promises a whole new level of control over their customers’ internet performance. This is a critical new capability for customers relying on cloud technologies like VoIP and Office 365. But most SD-WAN vendors are too complex or expensive for your SMB customers. In this webinar, we will show you how MSPs are using Bigleaf’s Cloud-first SD-WAN to gain the control they need over middle and last-mile internet without adding the complexity and expense of traditional SD-WAN solutions. You’ll learn: – How to talk to your SMB customers about SD-WAN – How to choose an SD-WAN for SMBs – How to get started leveraging Bigleaf SD-WAN for your customers

[Video] Putting SD-WAN to Work for Your SMB Customers

Amy Chan — Thu, 25 Jul 2019 19:07:57 +0000

SD-WAN promises a whole new level of control over their customers internet performance. This is a critical new capability for customers relying on cloud technologies like VoIP and Office 365. But most SD-WAN vendors are too complex or expensive for your SMB customers.

In this webinar, we will show you how MSPs are using Bigleaf’s Cloud-first SD-WAN to gain the control they need over middle and last-mile internet without adding the complexity and expense of traditional SD-WAN solutions. You’ll learn:

How to talk to your SMB customers about SD-WAN
How to choose an SD-WAN for SMBs
How to get started leveraging Bigleaf SD-WAN for your customers

You can watch the full recording any time. If you have any questions, or if you’d like to learn more about Bigleaf’s approach to SD-WAN, contact us today.

SD-WAN: One Size Doesn’t Fit All

Bigleaf Networks — Fri, 14 Jun 2019 00:39:00 +0000

[Video] Making Sense of Your SD-WAN Options w/ WatchGuard and Bigleaf

Amy Chan — Thu, 13 Jun 2019 23:17:06 +0000

In a crowded and sometimes confusing SD-WAN market, it’s easy for partners and end-users to get lost in the mix. Every SD-WAN vendor has its strengths and unique value. But all the hyperbole and marketing terminology makes it hard to choose the right SD-WAN for your needs.

We want to try something different…

That’s why we partnered with WatchGuard for a 60-minute webinar titled SD-WAN: One Size Doesn’t Fit All. In this presentation Bigleaf’s Co-founder, Jeff Burchett, and WatchGuard VP of Product Management, Brendan Patterson, walked through the most common use cases for SD-WAN and how to choose the right solution for each of them. They covered:

What SD-WAN technology is and why it matters
How SD-WAN is used in example use cases
Which SD-WAN scenarios you need to consider before deploying
How to make SD-WAN work for your business needs

As an industry-leading security vendor, Bigleaf has partnered with WatchGuard as part of their WatchGuardONE program. But, WatchGuard also offers their own SD-WAN functionality. That dynamic of coopetition presented a unique opportunity to drop the hype and simply present you with two completely different approaches to SD-WAN—each with its own use cases and benefits.

You can watch the full recording any time. If you have any questions, or if you’d like to learn more about Bigleaf and/or WatchGuard’s approach to SD-WAN, contact us today.

Spectrotel and Bigleaf bring Cloud-first SD-WAN to the Enterprise

Bigleaf Networks — Thu, 25 Apr 2019 00:41:00 +0000

Spectrotel, Inc., a leading national integrated solutions provider for enterprise businesses today announced their partnership with Bigleaf Networks, an industry leading Cloud-first Software Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) service that optimizes Internet and Cloud performance by dynamically choosing the best connection and adapting QoS in real time. “SD-WAN is all the buzz but with so many choices it is difficult for partners and customers to distinguish and understand all the differences between them, let alone figure out which is the best solution to meet their specific needs,” stated Ross Artale, President & COO. “The addition of Bigleaf to Spectrotel’s robust portfolio provides partners and customers a broad range of solutions and allows us to demonstrate the differences in order to recommend and design the ideal solution for their unique business challenge.” “We’re excited to be working with Spectrotel to combine the value of Bigleaf’s SD-WAN with their cloud offerings for real-time quality of service, load balancing, and uptime protection,” said Joel Mulkey, Bigleaf Founder and CEO. “With more applications running across customer networks all the time, Spectrotel customers need a solution built on intelligent software to protect their critical communication and collaboration applications. Spectrotel’s robust cloud solutions are a perfect match with our company focus.” “Bigleaf is somewhat unique, they focus their technology on managing the traffic between the edge devices and through the gateway for quality transport between edge devices, to the Internet and cloud applications,” stated Ross Artale. “The elegance of the Bigleaf solution is that it layers in the benefits of WAN optimization and fully autonomous QoS for voice and cloud applications without removal or change to the current security infrastructure.” With its robust portfolio and ability to virtualize the WAN across any transport, Spectrotel provides the customer and partner the most flexible and tailored end-to-end solution in the industry.

Introducing Bigleaf’s arch nemesis… The Circuit Destroyer

Amy Chan — Tue, 23 Apr 2019 16:28:17 +0000

Every hero needs a great villain. This month, the world finally met Bigleaf’s nemesis at Channel Partners Expo in Las Vegas. Its name? The Circuit Destroyer.

The Circuit Destroyer is Bigleaf’s evil twin, a router that’s been modified to make internet connections perform badly. With the Circuit Destroyer, we’re able to simulate not only outages, but any level of throughput, packet loss, latency and jitter. That means we can replicate the internet conditions that our customers face every day. Then we can show exactly how Bigleaf’s SD-WAN deals with those conditions to ensure uninterrupted application availability and performance.

Our CEO and Founder, Joel Mulkey, was on hand at the event to demo Bigleaf vs the Circuit Destroyer. Lucky for us, the cameras were rolling…

Does it feel like you’ve got a Circuit Destroyer in your internet? Request a 30-minute demo today and learn how Bigleaf’s Cloud-first SD-WAN can improve your internet and provide seamless performance for all of your applications.

Bigleaf takes on the “Circuit Destroyer” at Channel Partners Expo 2019

Bigleaf Networks — Tue, 16 Apr 2019 00:44:00 +0000

Over 300 Channel Partners saw Bigleaf Networks’ “Circuit Destroyer” demo for the first time at the 2019 Channel Partners Expo in Las Vegas, NV. In this demo, we were able to show how Bigleaf’s Cloud-first SD-WAN keeps a video call not only live, but also clear and smooth, through everyday internet performance issues like packet loss and latency. For those of you who couldn’t make it to the booth, we grabbed our CEO and Founder, Joel Mulkey, to run through the demo on camera. Check it out, and, if you’d like a live demo, you can request one at https://www.bigleaf.net/demo.

[Video] How Bigleaf SD-WAN improves Office 365 adoption and experience

Amy Chan — Tue, 27 Nov 2018 16:52:27 +0000

This month, we headed up to Seattle, WA to talk at Microsoft’s Machine Learning and Data Science conference about Bigleaf’s unique SD-WAN approach and how we’re helping improve Office 365 adoption and experience. Our founder and CEO, Joel Mulkey, was there to help explain why companies using Office 365 are rethinking their network architecture as more and more of their business technologies are moving to the Cloud.

Fortunately for us, the cameras were rolling…

Video Transcript

Hi. I’m Joel Mulkey, founder and CEO of Bigleaf networks. The world of business is in the middle of a massive shift right now. The cloud is taking over, and Office 365 is driving much of that. However, the connection between users and the cloud is preventing adoption in many cases. IT leaders are scared to deploy the great applications that folks like you were building. There are two main reasons for that.

The first is that the internet connection connecting to the cloud is unpredictable. We monitor thousands of internet connections all over and based on that data, we see that each internet connection on average experiences three and a half hours of downtime in given month. On top of that, if the connection up, it’s not necessarily healthy. You’ll see there are twenty-three hours of unhealthy time where the circuit is basically unusable.

The second major issue is that networks aren’t keeping up with the cloud revolution. Users are able to bring apps into their environment at any time, and Enterprise networks are built on static network policies. That’s a collision where the network is just simply not able to adapt as users procure and deploy these applications.

The cloud requires a new kind network, a new kind of Internet. One that’s smarter. That’s Bigleaf. Bigleaf has deployed software defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) to hundreds of mutual business customers. Those are Microsoft customers who are getting the application experience the developers intended because the network is no longer in the way.

Let me talk you through what this looks like.

Bigleaf is built into the internet backbone, the core of the internet. We also own and operate our own core Network. We deploy routers and servers and data centers all over.

We peer that network with hundreds of different networks, including [Microsoft’s]. We then deploy a small router at each customer location and between those endpoints we run our intelligent network software. This platform gives full visibility and control over the whole internet path ensuring that the application user is getting the experience that they should. Because we own this network, we peer it with over a thousand different Cloud applications. This means no matter what the user’s using, whether it’s a Microsoft app or something else, they get a consistent experience this what they were expecting.

Now want talk to you through four areas that we’re innovating in network today. The first is, when you deploy Network Technology, it needs to be easy to implement. Otherwise, it won’t be used. Bigleaf is simple. Our router drops in in between the customer’s firewall and their internet connections. That connects back to our core Network and that’s it. We don’t touch the LAN. We don’t touch the security. We simply focus on internet reliability and performance.

The second area is reliability. Users are expecting a very real-time experience today. If you’re on a key phone call and it drops, or even if it’s glitchy, people upset. Or, if you’ve got a video, you’re streaming and it picks the lates people wonder what’s wrong with the application or what’s wrong with the network. At Bigleaf, we address this through intelligent software that inspects each internet connection ten times second, gathering huge amounts of data on packet loss latency, jitter and capacity. We then take that data and make real-time routing decisions on it to keep the user experience great. You can think of it like a genius network engineer who has access to statistics on the whole internet path end-to-end, and who never takes any restroom breaks, never takes a day off and commits no errors.

The third area is flexibility. The problem with networks built on static policies, like much of today’s Network Technology, is that they don’t adapt to the continual evolution in applications where users are adding things constantly. At Bigleaf we believe users shouldn’t have to worry about how to make their network deal with new applications. So we use intelligent software that automatically identifies those applications through algorithms and heuristics and classifies them into six different categories. We then take that traffic end-to-end across the internet and prioritize it even when it’s congested our users get the best possible application experience without having to manually configure their Network.

The fourth area I want to touch on is autonomy. Autonomous software is very exciting. You’re all here because of that. What we see in the networking space is that it can be applicable to take away the low-level details of managing how to implement the network and releases people to focus more on the outcome that they really want. When I look at autonomous software, I see that it tends to sit in this Sweet Spot somewhere between full manual control and full automation in network software and routing technology.

Like what we do. You can automate it pretty heavily and have that be successful. That’s because computers are better than humans at real-time network monitoring and routing decisions. And the scope of the problem is small enough that you can build autonomous software effectively to accomplish things. Networks built on autonomous software means that administrators are happy because their networks behave like they intended them to, even when conditions change, and users are happy because their applications work right all the time. Bigleaf customers are happy customers.

We make their applications behave like they were intended with our direct peering to Microsoft network and our automatic classification of all types of cloud traffic. Bigleaf is the best way to connect to Office 365. If you want to learn more or talk about how we can work together. Please see me the back afterward. Thank you.

Bigleaf Networks – Microsoft Startup Showcase

Bigleaf Networks — Tue, 27 Nov 2018 01:49:00 +0000

Bigleaf founder & CEO, Joel Mulkey, explains how Bigleaf’s Cloud-first SD-WAN helps keep Office 365 running smoothly through internet outages and slow-downs.

Bigleaf SD-WAN – Customizing Your Internet Performance Alerts

Bigleaf Networks — Tue, 31 Jul 2018 00:59:00 +0000

Learn how to customize Bigleaf’s alerts to provide the exact visibility you need into the performance of your company’s Internet connections.

Using High Speed Dial-up Internet with Bigleaf Networks

Bigleaf Networks — Mon, 02 Apr 2018 01:01:00 +0000

Bigleaf is thrilled to show off our 56k support! Watch and learn how easy it is to install and use.

Bigleaf’s 90-Second Installation

Jeff Burchett — Tue, 26 Jul 2016 19:51:40 +0000

For the past year, we’ve been proving how important SD-WAN is and how easy Bigleaf makes it. Frankly, Bigleaf is the easiest way to leverage SD-WAN, without the hassle of replacing firewalls.

In the spirit of “embarrassingly easy”, here’s a quick video showing a Bigleaf installation into an existing firewall in less than 90 seconds.

Bigleaf 90-Second Install Demo

Bigleaf Networks — Wed, 20 Jul 2016 01:17:00 +0000

Bigleaf is the easiest way to get the benefits of SD-WAN without replacing your existing firewall. Check out this quick demo showing a typical Bigleaf install. There’s no config of the Bigleaf system required – our provisioning team pre-configures the router and it shows up ready to go!

Optimized Cloud Access – Bigleaf Networks SD-WAN

Bigleaf Networks — Sat, 26 Sep 2015 01:20:00 +0000

Bigleaf SD-WAN optimizes your office Internet for Cloud applications, protecting VoIP, VDI, and SaaS from the effects of bad internet performance. Bigleaf provides a stress-free way to use multiple Internet connections and prioritize your crucial applications across the internet.

Bigleaf Single Circuit Benefits

Bigleaf Networks — Wed, 09 Sep 2015 01:22:00 +0000

Bigleaf provides several key benefits even when running over just one ISP connection. Those include Dynamic QoS for bi-directional application prioritization, in-depth circuit monitoring and alerting, and plug-and-play painless circuit changes.

Bigleaf – Internet Optimization

Bigleaf Networks — Wed, 05 Aug 2015 01:28:00 +0000

Bigleaf provides a stress-free way to utilize multiple Internet providers to build a more robust Internet connection that is ideal for supporting today’s VoIP and Cloud applications. We’re a great fit for any small/mid-sized businesses leveraging internet connectivity for Hosted VoIP, Virtual Desktop, AWS, Azure, Microsoft 365 — any type of Cloud technology.

Bigleaf: How it Works

Bigleaf Networks — Tue, 21 Apr 2015 01:26:00 +0000

This video provides an overview of the Bigleaf technology and platform. Bigleaf Networks provides redundant and high-performance internet connectivity across commodity broadband connections for SMBs and mid-market enterprises. Bigleaf leverages SD-WAN principles, focused on improving the reliability, performance, and value of cloud-based applications by providing customers with a “plug & play” means to leverage multiple ISPs in a seamless manner. With Bigleaf, customers can mitigate one of the most significant risks to the cloud strategies, unreliable internet connectivity.

Bigleaf Networks Seamless Failover Demo

Bigleaf Networks — Mon, 10 Nov 2014 03:43:00 +0000

Bigleaf provides redundant internet connectivity that prevents outages by leveraging carrier diversity and enables seamless failover for all applications, unlike legacy solutions that either lack diversity or are burdened by application-specific limitations. Check out more info at www.bigleaf.net